I continue to be dismayed with President Barack Obama’s position on questions from Black United States citizens. He seems to believe that any request for attention for issues of concern to the Black community (writ large) is exclusively race based. Hence, he developed a flawed boilerplate response that not only diminished legitimate issues but also makes Black citizen functionally second class. The President’s attitude must change. The President is indeed the Chief Executive of the nation; he should therefore act appropriately to his office’s responsibilities.

My concern began with the President’s response to concerns of the Congressional Black Caucus about the high level of unemployment among Black people. The President said,

I will tell you that I think the most important thing I can do for the African-American community is the same thing I can do for the American community, period, and that is get the economy going again and get people hiring again,” the president told Richard Wolf of USA TODAY and Justin Hyde of the Detroit Free Press in an exclusive joint interview.

[...]

I think it’s a mistake to start thinking in terms of particular ethnic segments of the United States rather than to think that we are all in this together and we are all going to get out of this together, he said.

I wrote a response to this statement in a previous post. The President’s “colorblind” approach is intrinsically unfair to those who are not part of the majority. Because non-majority group members will never be the majority–at least in the short term of the President’s first term–their issues necessarily will not get any attention at all using his rationale.

In response to a question from April Ryan, the President reiterated his boilerplate response.

The only thing I cannot do is, by law I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks,” Obama said. “I’m the president of the entire United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That, in turn, is going to help lift up the African-American community.

I realize that the President is the Chief Executive for the whole nation, but Black people are also equal citizens under the law who have the right to bring their concerns to elected officials and to expect that all necessary action will be taken. That does not mean that merely seeking redress from the elected representatives of the people requires the President to prepare race-based legislation. I do not know where the President got that idea from.

I figure that the President should not focus on the identity of the person seeking redress, but rather he should focus on the issues presented. For example, poverty. The President should be able to consult his Ivy League educated staff to develop policy, legislation or both that would be able to help many citizens, including Black people.

Why does the President have expansive and fast action for Wall Street (despite their regression to avaricious behavior that led to the crisis), corporations (particularly in the unsavory health care “reform” Bill), and those with wealth, while being slow footed and slack jawed for everybody else? This is not a proper footing for a President, and he should correct it immediately.

The Senate’s health care Bill becomes more abhorrent the longer one examines it.

It seems that the value of the employer-sponsored health insurance (H.R. 3590, section 9002) would rather be used as a means of calculating the amount of the 40% excise tax in section 9001.

[For analysis of this tax issue as well as other tax issues in H.R. 3590 and the Manager's Amendment, see the text of the Joint Committee of Taxation (JCX-61-09).]

In analyzing H.R. 3590, I presumed earlier (search H.R. 3590 is search box) that section 9002 would be used as an entryway to tax the value of health insurance by including it in an employee’s gross income under section 61.

Given the increase of premiums that will occur with the unfortunately likely passage of this Bill, many people are likely to be subject to the 40% exise tax.

In addition, I comment negatively on a statement of President Barack Obama’s advisor, David Axelrod, in which Axelrod explained that a tax on insurance companies would force insurance companies to bring down the price of so-called Cadillac policies (see views of Allan Sloan, and the SEIU).

Well, as I have seen on my bill, cable companies also recieve taxes on their services. What do they do? They assess it to subscribers. I think insurance companies will do the same.

H.R. 3590 has an amendment controlled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada).

It is a 383 page PDF.

There is no amendment to section 9002 which adds the value of employer-sponsored health insurance to employees’ W-2 (potentially their gross income).

I have read the President Barack Obama’s Nobel Lecture that he gave upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. In the Lecture, the President attempted to argue that warcraft can lead to peace. As I have argued before, war and peace are mutually exclusive. Further examination of the speech indicates that the President defines peace as adherence to U.S. values. The President’s performance indicates a peculiar definition of peace–follow the lead of the United States to avoid the wrath of sanctions or war from the United States.

The President made several points concerning his views of the righteousness of U.S. foreign policies (the U.S. had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $14 trillion–the largest economy in the world).

–War can make “peace” (peace is implicitly equal to adherence to U.S. policies).

–The United States cannot pursue its interests (deemed universal by the President) alone. Instead, the United States will pursue its interests with “international” (as gathered by the United States) support.

–Military action (or the threat of it) can be used to fulfill U.S. objectives.

–U.S. interests are equal to global security, which the United States underwrote with its soldiers’ blood and arms [The President's statement begs a question--who asked the United States to perform this sacrifice?]

–Short of military action, social disturbance or destruction must be used or threatened to achieve U.S. objectives.

–The President defines “peace” as that which is based on the inherent rights and dignity of each person (which are human rights, the right to speak freely, worship as one pleases, choose their own leaders, assemble without fear, democracy, and economic security and opportunity [presumably the U.S's rule of law beliefs].

As the reader can see, the President accomplished quite an accomplishment, convincing people that his speech was innocent, peaceful, and aspirational while it just brandished his iron fist policies.

The current health-care legislation should be defeated. The United States should reconsider its approach to true health-care reform.

The movement from single payer (publicly administered health insurance) to “robust public option”, to “public option”, and finally to no “public option” has been extremely disappointing to me, to say the least. I frankly opposed the bill once single payer was no longer being considered. The society cannot rely on private health insurance companies as they charge more and provide less coverage to bolster executive salaries and their share price (the ultimate goal of a firm).

When the thought of legislation for health insurance began, the goals were to get the uninsured to become holders of health insurance. The private insurance companies, as stock corporations, owe fiduciary responsibilities to the shareholder, not to the insured. It is no wonder that the insurance system is not working properly. The system becomes more distorted when paying for the obscenely expensive corporate bureaucracy squeezes out payments for health care services.

President Barack Obama has kept an arms-length distance from the legislative disaster occurring on Capitol Hill. His speech was aspirational, but the lack of specifics and active legislative craftsmanship contributed directly to the chaos occurring on the Hill today.

In reviewing the Senate Bill, I discovered, to my chagrin, that one of the revenue offsets is to add the value of employer-paid health insurance to the employee’s gross income on the W-2 (H.R. 3590, section 9002). This is grossly unacceptable to have to pay more taxes for a Bill that would not change anything (It would be something else if it helped to get health insurance for those who need it).

Regardless of this, the President is eager to sign any bill to declare “victory.” It would be well a Pyrrhic one. The Senate Bill should be defeated. The President should return to the drawing board and come up with true health care reform proposal.

A defeat in this case would be stinging but necessary and educational.

Post script:

Senate Health Care Bill (H.R. 3590)

26 United States Code section 6051

House health care bill (H.R. 3962)

President Barack Obama, in Executive Order 13523, provided federal employees with four hours off on Christmas Eve, December 24. A PDF link to the text of the Executive Order as well as the full text of the Order follows.

E9-30020 [PDF]

Executive Order 15323 of December 11, 2009

Half-Day Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies on Thursday, December 24, 2009

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. All executive branch departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall be closed and their employees excused from duty for the last half of the scheduled workday on Thursday, December 24, 2009, the day before Christmas Day, except as provided in section 2 of this order.

Sec. 2. The heads of executive branch departments and agencies may determine that certain offices and installations of their organizations, or parts thereof, must remain open and that certain employees must remain on duty for the full scheduled workday on December 24, 2009, for reasons of national security, defense, or other public need.

Sec. 3. Thursday, December 24, 2009, shall be considered as falling within the scope of Executive Order 11582 of February 11, 1971, and of 5 U.S.C. 5546 and 6103(b) and other similar statutes insofar as they relate to the pay and leave of employees of the United States.

Sec. 4. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(Presidential Sig.)

THE WHITE HOUSE, December 11, 2009.

President Barack Obama attempted to synthesize peace with war (two subjects that cannot be considered equivalents). The result was eloquently disgraceful. The implied insult of Dr. King was astounding. Overall, the President’s speech was a disappointment.

In his speech, the President referred to Martin Luther King, who was awarded a Nobel Peace prize in 1964. While the President mentioned Dr. King’s actions with regard to race, Dr. King’s Nobel Lecture also addressed poverty and war.

In fact, the President glossed over King’s lecture. What is key about the quote he selected is what he chose to cut—Dr. King actually opposes the view (war is a tool of and for peace) that the President presented in his Lecture. Dr. King’s Lecture also is prophetic.

Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

This is precisely the reason that the warcraft the President advocates will never lead to peace. War (or threat of warfare, which the President implies in his speech) never resolves problems. No matter how many troops are sent to Afghanistan, the conflict will not provide any humane resolution. Ultimately, the U.S. will leave Afghanistan without much progress, except that Afghanistan will be worse off for the experience.

At the root, soldiers train to kill, presumably in conditions where the adversarial force meets head on with the U.S. force. The last country to try (and fail) with this type of approach was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This is what the U.S. military is operationally setup to handle. The problem is that people have learned this and fight using guerilla tactics. The U.S. is not operationally setup to handle this with its hierarchical command structure.

Also, militaries destroy; they cannot rebuild. This is the weakness of the U.S’s approach.

Warcraft is encouraged when there are U.S. business interests tied to the rebuilding of a country after it is delivered to near ruin (that is, U.S. companies that profit from the destruction of war.

He quoted from the portion that addressed racial justice, but ignored the portions addressing poverty and war. Given what Dr. King addressed, I can see why the President did not mention these inconvenient facts.

The reader should study Dr. King’s Lecture in full and compare it with the President’s Lecture. I will offer some selections of Dr. King’s Lecture below.

Dr. King on poverty—

The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for “the least of these”. Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them. The wealthy nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority.

Dr. King on war—

So man’s proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war – God forbid! – will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death. So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

For war billions more, but no more for the poor.–Rev. Joseph Lowery

It has been argued that the United States is in a “post-racial” era because of the election of President Barack Obama. While I was happy that President Obama was elected, I knew that his election would be irrelevant to the hierarchical power structure in the society of the United States. In fact, the President will not be able to address the problems identified by several members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) because of the demographic makeup of and power distribution in the United States. A recent dispute between the President and the several members of the CBC has reaffirmed my view.

Rev. Lowery’s eulogy at Coretta Scott King’s funeral was criticized, but it is seemingly playing out in recent times. The country has extended much of its treasury to the financial sector (said to be the economic lifeblood of the country). Agreeing with the need for a functioning financial sector also leads a reasonable person to require stringent regulations to guarantee against careless risk taking. The money was distributed, the regulations will not come as both Represenative Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd receive the bulk of their campaign contributions from these firms.

Needless to mention, the United States is engaged in two major military operations costing the taxpayers billions of dollars per month. Regardless of the economic maladies, the money flows without limit.

The zeal to protect the financial sector and advance warcraft, sadly, is not replicated for some others. Representative Maxine Waters, speaking on behalf of Congressional Black Caucus members who are on the House Financial Services Committee, stated that the suffering of the poor is not being addressed.

Each of us serves on the Financial Services Committee and we have not been forceful enough in our efforts to protect the most vulnerable of our population. We cannot address system risk on a broad scale without taking steps to prevent the crumbling of our community’s infrastructure. Since last September, we have continuously voted for bailouts and reform for the very institutions that created this devastation, without properly protecting the African American community, or small business.

That stops today.

While we appreciate the need for the expansion of regulatory authority, we can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street. Policy for the least of these must be integrated into everything that we do. We must protect and defend our individual constituents, as well as the small businesses and institutions that serve them.

Also, the New York Times published an article discussing the plight that some Black people are facing in looking for employment.

The President held a “jobs summit” in which he explained that he was open to all alternatives, but options were limited. Rep. Waters noted that she did not think the President’s jobs summit was sufficient to address the problems.

Responding to the criticism, in an interview with the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, the President stated that his best approach for unemployment in the African-American community is to address the problems in the American community.

The President’s statement sounds good, fair, and balanced, except that given the vast power disparity among the races in the United States, the same solution for all will not necessarily fix similar problems in every segment of society in the United States. For example, tax breaks will work for those who own property, but what about those who rent?

United States (population: 281,421,906 (2000 Census)

Given the President’s expensive surge in Afghanistan, continuing support of the irresponsible financial sector, overwhelming and intractible power concentration with the haves in society (who are also, not coincidentally, influential political contributors), the President will not be able to do very much for those of all races without power. It may be a long four years.

U.S. Election day: November 4, 2008 (Barack Obama wins election)

Operation Cast Lead: started-December 27, 2008, ended-January 18, 2009

President Obama’s Inauguration: January 20, 2009 (noon)  [President George W. Bush's term ended at 11:59 a.m.]

The Goldstone report of the United Nations Human Rights Council is here.

Gaza’s territorial waters contain a large amount of natural gas.

At the September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, a number of high-level leaders from different countries gave speeches to the General Assembly. The newspapers attempted to provide summaries, but a better source these days is to read the text of the speeches yourself.

One speech that was noticed this week was the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A number of newspapers negatively characterized his speech. Reading the text showed that the speech was indeed critical (as President Barack Obama delivered critiques of President Ahmadinejad (President Ahmadinejad listened to President Obama’s speech, the representatives of a number of other countries walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech–I’m not sure of the effectiveness of this tactic today with the Internet always seeking content) , but also well-composed.

I describe a short selection of his speech below. I recommend reading the text in full.

President Ahmadinejad described the theme of his speech at the beginning–the difference of to worldviews, one based on materialism and imperialism and another based on human dignity and respect for all people.

Specifically, President Ahmadinejad critiqued the policy of the United States just printing currency, which passes U.S. debt to other countries.

It is no longer possible to inject thousands of billions of dollars of unreal wealth to the world economy simply by printing worthless paper assets, or transfer inflation as well as social and economic problems to others through creating sever budget deficits. The engine of unbridled capitalism with its unfair system of thought has reached the end of road and is unable to move. The era of capitalist thinking and imposition of one’s thoughts on the international community, intended to predominate the world in the name of globalization and the age of setting up empires is over. It is no longer possible to humiliate nations and impose double standard policies on the world community.

President Ahmadinejad also criticized the use of democracy to bully other nations.

Approaches in which realization of the interests of certain powers is considered as the only criteria to weigh democracy, and using the ugliest methods of intimidation and deceit under the mantle of freedom as a democratic practice, and approaches  through which sometimes dictators are portrayed as democrats, lack legitimacy and must be totally rejected.

President Ahmadinejad also critiqued Israel’s was against Gaza in which Gaza was destroyed but is unable to rebuild. Gaza was unable to defend itself as it does not have a military or heavy arms to thwart an invasion. [Comment: That the "war" was ended simultaneously with the end of George W. Bush's term is particularly galling.]

How can one imagine that the inhuman policies in Palestine may continue; to force the entire population of a country out of their homeland for more than 60 years by resorting to force and coercion; to attack them with all types of arms and even
prohibited weapons; to deny them of their legitimate right of self-defense, while much to the chagrin of the international community calling the occupiers as the peacelovers,  and portraying the victims as terrorists.